by Andreea Patru

Some films from this year’s Locarno Film Festival deal with motherhood on different levels, like an adjustment to a new lifestyle as it happens in Milla (d. Valerie Massadian), or as the condition of being a mother seems to have sucked the life out of a woman as in Scary Mother (d. Ana Urushadze) and Freiheit (d. Jan Speckenbach). All the three films have in common a feminist approach that questions the Victorian ideas of motherhood as the heart of a balanced domestic life, nurturing their families without concern for their own needs or desires.